Just about anybody who's lived in San Francisco for more than a blink of the eye has heard of Glide Memorial Church and its larger-than-life leader, the Rev. Cecil Williams. Most have heard of St. Anthony's and its legendary soup kitchen, too.

Despite 30 years of doing a lot of the same kind of work, your average city resident probably has as good a chance of coming up with its name as with all 11 members of the Board of Supervisors by district. (If you can do that without the help of Google and you don't work at City Hall, we'll be very impressed. And a little worried.)

So why has ECS been the Tab soda to the others' Coke and Pepsi?

Blame marketing. That's what the honest folks on its staff have done.

"We have a pretty low profile in San Francisco," admitted Bruce Beery, director of development. "Nobody knows what we do."

He said that for years, the staff has focused on its primary goal of providing food, education, counseling and job training to 14,200 low-income and homeless people each year. Half of all of the city's adult shelter beds are operated by Episcopal Community Services, and the organization says that 96 percent of people in their housing programs stay off the streets for good.

But you probably had no idea, right?

"We haven't been focused on informing the community," Beery said in a major understatement.

"We were so bad in what we were doing we did not even have signs on our buildings," he continued. "Communications is me and part-time work from my grant manager. And I don't have a background in communications."

He added good-naturedly that if you really want to see the backwater of communications, visit the organization's website at ecs-sf.org.

"You're going to cry," he said. "It is so old-fashioned. It is really bad."

The staff realized that having nobody know what they did hurt the organization when it came to raising private money. But unlike some depressing city stories - we're looking at you, Leland Yee- this one has a happy ending.

It stared with Megan Robershotte, a 29-year-old account manager at Heat, a San Francisco advertising firm. The Alamo Square resident previously lived South of Market and was bothered by the daily sight of homeless people on her commute.

"At first, it's something you see and it's like, 'Oh man, this bums me out,' " she said. "Then I felt so guilty about it, I felt like I had to do something to get involved."

Robershotte learned about ECS through a friend who works for the organization and volunteered to help serve food at one of its shelters in the fall of 2012.

"It's humbling to see what a difference just a warm meal can make," she said. "It takes you out of your privileged everyday life."

From there, she had co-workers last year come with her to volunteer once a month and then organized a sock drive over the holidays, collecting 400 pairs. Staff at ECS then told Robershotte that the organization's 30th anniversary was coming up and asked if her firm could help.

The 70-person staff usually works for big companies like Electronic Arts, Bank of the West and Kendall Jackson. But her bosses agreed to create a full-blown advertising campaign for ECS pro bono.

Suddenly, the homeless services provider went from 1985-style communications to downright cool. The campaign - "Homeless, Not Hopeless" - included a launch party with a live band, projections of the organization's logo on walls around the city, wild postings like those flyers pasted onto temporary construction walls, and a new website with in-depth videos showing the lives of clients. They can be viewed at helpsfhomeless.org.

One of the videos is of Rita Mouton-Patterson, a 55-year-old woman who first went to ECS for help in 2010 after losing her job as a dispatcher for a plumbing company. Without a paycheck, she lost her housing and bounced around between friends' and relatives' homes, sleeping in her car once, too.

"I'm not a typical homeless person - I don't have drug problems, I've never been to jail, I don't have any handicaps," she said. "Anything you associate with homeless people, none of it applies to me. The only thing is I lost my job, and there was no net for me to catch or to catch me."

She completed the organization's CHEFS program, a six-month culinary training course that also offers help finding a kitchen job. Mouton-Patterson now cooks at Zynga and has her own room in a residential hotel. She loved being followed by Heat's filmmaking staff for a week.

"I felt like a movie star!" she exclaimed.

The website has helped drive up the number of donors giving to ECS by 100 percent, and the total dollars donated are up 195 percent. The number of volunteers and social media traffic are also way up.

It's been good news for Heat, too. The website won a "Best in Class" award from the Interactive Media Awards and a Silver ADDY award from the San Francisco chapter of the American Advertising Federation.

And Robershotte counts herself as a winner, too. She now calls Mouton-Patterson a friend, and they have dinner regularly. She's also earned a seat on the ECS board. Sounds like that was a no-brainer.

Quote of the week

"I'm losing it."

Supervisor Jane Kim near the end of a more-than-eight-hour board meeting when, at 10:40 p.m., Supervisor London Breed requested postponing an item.